Here is a fascinating quote on this subject:
"I am fully aware that I have never written anything other than fictions.
For all that, I would not want to say that they are outside truth. It
seems possible to me to make fiction work within truth, to induce truth
effects within a fictional discourse, and in some way make the discourse of
truth arouse, 'fabricate' something which does not as yet exist, thus
'fiction' something. One 'fictions' history starting from a political
reality that renders it true, one 'fictions' a politics that doesn't as yet
exist starting from an historial truth." Foucault 1979, "Interview with
Lucette Finas"
Perhaps this is the same quote that is at the center of the
"Foucault-wrote-fictions" discussion. What I find particularly interesting
about this quote, however, is not that he wrote fictions, but the politics
of "fictioning something".
Matt Archer
"I am fully aware that I have never written anything other than fictions.
For all that, I would not want to say that they are outside truth. It
seems possible to me to make fiction work within truth, to induce truth
effects within a fictional discourse, and in some way make the discourse of
truth arouse, 'fabricate' something which does not as yet exist, thus
'fiction' something. One 'fictions' history starting from a political
reality that renders it true, one 'fictions' a politics that doesn't as yet
exist starting from an historial truth." Foucault 1979, "Interview with
Lucette Finas"
Perhaps this is the same quote that is at the center of the
"Foucault-wrote-fictions" discussion. What I find particularly interesting
about this quote, however, is not that he wrote fictions, but the politics
of "fictioning something".
Matt Archer